Exclusive: Google is planning to roll out a music streaming service to capitalize on the power of YouTube...

Sources in the record industry told Fortune that it is not yet clear if a subscription-based model is more lucrative (and therefore preferable) to an ad-subsidized approach. Free nets more customers, but the subscription model has consumers actively paying for music -- a good thing, if you're in the music business, which just posted its first year-on-year increase in sales in thirteen years....

Google is entering an already crowded field: Spotify, Pandora (P), Rdio, Soundcloud, and Muve Music all offer customers similar access to large online music libraries. Apple is rumored to be building a "radio" feature in its iTunes program that would deliver streaming music based upon a user's tastes -- a service something like Pandora -- that further merges the experience of being in a "store" to purchase music, and then listening to it in a "player."

They're all fighting over a still small pie. U.S. consumers have been fairly slow to join -- and stick with -- subscription music services. The most popular, Muve Music, has just 1.4 million customers. (Spotify is close behind, with about 1 million.) Its success is in large part due to the fact that it bundles its price into a cellphone bill, as if it were a cable operator charging for an MTV/VH1 package. The mobile carrier that owns Muve, Cricket, is then able to sell subscriptions at less than $5 a month, far lower rates than Spotify, which generally costs about twice that much.

Soundcloud, a free music streaming site that is user-curated and is, in many ways, similar in spirit and practice to YouTube, has recently begun partnering with major artists and large companies, such as Snoop Lion (nee, Dog) and Red Bull. Soundcloud boasts that it is the fastest growing music streaming site, with its users uploading about 10 hours of content a minute. In 2010, YouTube users uploaded 35 hours of content per minute; in 2011, they posted 48 hours per minute; as of last May, it was up to 72 hours a minute. It's not all music, but a lot is.

Ford wants to use the smartphone as a wireless hub, while GM is working with AT&T to pipe connectivity directly into its cars.

America’s biggest car makers have realized the cars they make are in fact the ultimate mobile devices – moving at speed, and pushing faster data speeds too. Both Ford and GM are moving to make their cars smarter with web capability, but they announced different strategies at Mobile World Congress today. While GM announced it was partnering with AT&T to bring wireless connectivity to its cars next year, Ford partnered with an Internet player, music streaming service Spotify, using iPhones as the wireless hubs for its cars.

Ford’s strategy offers more in-car development, sooner. It only has to wait for Spotify to release an update to its iOS app (which it says will be in the first quarter of this year) and drivers who have Ford SYNC in their car will be able to use Spotify in the Car with voice commands.

In an effort to balance growing royalty costs, Pandora announced Wednesday that it will be eliminating unlimited ad-supported music streaming on the service via mobile.

Pandora listeners in the US will now be limited to 40 hours of free ad-supported streaming on their mobile devices each calendar month, after which they’ll have to pay a fee to keep listening $.99 in-app purchase.

Kennedy says that the average user on Pandora only spends 20 hours on the service across all platforms. He says that Wednesday’s announcement is likely to only effect 4% of Pandora’s monthly active listeners.

Some people haven’t forgiven Facebook for the changes it made last year to its news feed algorithm, alterations that ratcheted down the audience reach for some posts written on behalf of brand.

“You can spend a lot of time building up these audiences, but when things change constantly on the platform, it’s very challenging,” Dorothy Hui, Roc Nation’s Vice President of Digital Marketing, said of Facebook during a social media summit hosted by the Recording Academy prior to the Grammy Awards.

No doubt, Facebook’s tweaks, discussed in detail in the March 2, 2013 issue of Billboard, altered the playing field for bands and marketers who rely on the social network to get the word out. “It’s very risky to build your business on someone else’s platform,” said Paul Verna, senior analyst with eMarketer who advised companies to diversify their social efforts to as not to be dependent on any one platform. “You just never know when those platforms make changes that don’t serve your needs and you’re left dangling.”

There are other ways to adjust, said Geoffrey Colon, vice president of Social@Ogilvy, the digital marketing arm of Ogilvy & Mather. For those who are sticking to Facebook, Colon offers six ways to leverage the world’s largest social network.

Ek's done more than just noodle in online music. He's been more successful at advancing the notion of subscribing to a celestial jukebox than anyone before. While music-subscription services Rhapsody, the legal Napster and MOG (soon to relaunch as Daisy) all pre-date Spotify, Ek has 5 million paying customers — (five times Rhapsody's base) — and 20 million active members who use the ad-supported free version. (Spotify charges $5 monthly for ad-free listening on a PC or $10 for mobile access.)

His twist on rivals was emphasizing the social aspects of music — showing what your friends are listening to via Facebook. Others had tried to do that but not as successfully.

Now, he wants to take the social aspect of discovering new music to the next level by showing you what your favorite artists listen to.

By Eliot Van Buskirk of Evolver.fm. We’ve been following the progress of Earbits, because it’s such an outlier in the internet radio arena. Witness how it experimented with charging bands rather than listeners.

LIVE FROM MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS: The CEOs of Foursquare and Deezer described how they are innovating to drive user engagement in today's keynote at Congress....

CEO of music service Deezer, Axel Dauchez, said that innovation is “absolutely critical” but knowing where to focus this innovation is key to driving engagement.

Deezer is aiming to make music a “more intense part of users identity”, according to Dauchez, by providing the means for active music discovery and making the relationship between users and artists more tangible by providing exclusive content.

Integrating the live music experience into the service is also an important element that drives user engagement. “We need to provide a better experience of the gig itself,” Dauchez said.

Although taking down barriers to music discovery is important, Dauchez there is also scope to put in some restrictions to drive user engagement. For example, if a band is making an album, they can make some of music available for a short period of time, which drives a significant rise in user engagement.

On Wednesday night, I ran into Billboard senior branding correspondent Andrew Hampp at the Digital Media Wire Music awards dinner (I was on a panel there), who dropped some interesting news: Billboard was announcing that night that it had begun integrating YouTube into its charts, which instantly put the “Harlem Shake” song atop the charts.

So not only do the kids consider YouTube the best unlimited music service in the world, but now, the most traditionally authoritative music sales chart is counting YouTube views

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